A ten-minute protocol for transforming Saccharomyces cerevisiae by electroporation

Summary We present a simplified and rapid method for the transformation of yeast cells by electroporation. Stationary cells, scraped off the agar of Petri dish cultures stored in the refrigerator for up to 6 weeks, are suspended in sorbitol buffer, spun down by gentle centrifugation, transferred into the electroporation cuvette, and immediately subjected to transformation via electroporation. Transformation efficiency of this 10-min method, which does not require the preparation of cell cultures, is about 10% of the hitherto best performing transformation procedure using cells of defined growth phase.